Ships
- USS San Jacinto (CVL-30) Captain from 14 October 1944 · Relieved on 24 August 1945
Michael Holt Kernodle was born on 25 June 1896 in Graham, North Carolina. He graduated from the United States Naval Academy with the class of 1921. During the First World War he served in the transport service. He was promoted to commander on 1 July 1941 and to temporary captain on 20 June 1942.
In the summer of 1942 he was air officer of the aircraft carrier Wasp. On 7 and 8 August, as American troops landed at Guadalcanal and Tulagi, he directed the carrier's air department through the opening attacks and the air support that followed. He received the Navy Cross for that work. The next month a Japanese submarine torpedoed Wasp south of the Solomons, and the carrier was lost. Kernodle was her air officer when she went down.
On 14 October 1944 he assumed command of the light aircraft carrier San Jacinto, relieving Captain William D. Anderson. The ship was already with the fast carrier force in the western Pacific, in the middle of the strikes that opened the campaign for the Philippines. On 25 October 1944, during the carrier fighting of the Battle of Leyte Gulf, he was awarded the Silver Star for his conduct as commanding officer.
He kept San Jacinto in the offensive through the winter. Her aircraft struck targets in the Philippines and Formosa and joined the January 1945 sweep into the South China Sea. In February and March the carrier's planes raided the Japanese home islands and supported the landings on Iwo Jima as the fleet closed on Okinawa.
From 22 March through 19 May 1945, San Jacinto operated off Okinawa while Japanese aircraft attacked the force repeatedly. Kernodle handled the ship so her gunners could engage, several of the attackers were shot down, and the carrier was not hit. Over those weeks he directed the ship and her air group against enemy planes, shore positions, and shipping, work credited with forty-seven Japanese aircraft destroyed and with further damage ashore and to enemy ships. He received a gold star in lieu of a second Navy Cross. In the same period the fast carriers off Okinawa, San Jacinto among them, broke up Japan's last large surface attack of the war.
Kernodle remained in command through the summer raids that ended the fighting. For his service as commanding officer from 1 July to 15 August 1945 he received the Legion of Merit with the combat distinguishing device. On 24 August 1945 he was relieved by Captain Hugh H. Goodwin.
After the war he commanded the naval air base at Long Beach, California. He retired in 1951 as a rear admiral. Kernodle died on 26 December 1959, survived by his wife, Edna Skinner Kernodle.